by Mike Shevdon
"Look! I really can't deal with this teasing. I'm not in the mood."
"You were in the mood earlier."
I dropped my voice back down to a reasonable level, having suddenly become aware that I had raised it. "Would you kindly change back to the way you were so we can continue this discussion in a civilised manner?" "All right." She collected her bag from the table and stood up, stepping around the table and leaned down to whisper close to my ear. "Give me a moment. I have to slip into something a little more comfortable. For you, that is."
She turned and walked back towards the coffee shop, skirt swinging with her walk, legs long and ankles slim, heels clicking on the hard paving. As she approached the glass door, one of the guys at the table nearby got up to open it for her. She smiled, exchanging small words of thanks and entered, lost behind the reflection of the glass. The guy went back to his mates and there was a degree of ribald teasing as he joined them. If only they knew.
He didn't sit down again, but they stood up around him, gathering their things together and ribbing one another as they moved past the table where I sat. "You've got your hands full there, mate," said one as he passed, grinning.
"Wish I had," remarked the one who'd opened the door.
"In your dreams." The last one passed me, addressing his comment to his friend's back.
I watched them go, as they nudged and jostled each other, laughing. I had never had friends like that, never felt comfortable or at ease in the shifting rivalry of peer groups. My early managers had said I was not a team player, but I had made a career out of playing with teams. My ability to see through the mire of conflicting information, to focus effort on the elements that represented paydirt, had made me successful. I was well-off, if not actually rich, and while I was sure it wasn't just wealth and status that had attracted my ex-wife, I knew it had played its part. What I had perhaps been slow to understand was that being successful couldn't sustain a relationship. My success had given me power and influence, but marriages weren't built on power, they were built on trust. And power trusted no one.
Still, I had my daughter. She was power incarnate as far as I was concerned. I was coiled around her little finger and she knew it. Unfortunately, my ex-wife knew it too and it was a constant source of friction between us. "What on earth possessed you to buy her those?" she'd demanded, when we returned from one of our weekend jaunts with her showing off sequinned hipster jeans with laces down the front.
"It was what she wanted," I would always say, which would spark the age-old row about the difference between what she wanted and what she needed. In my view, what she needed was at least one parent who would occasionally give her what she wanted. The problem was it was never my ex. She always ended up fulfilling needs, not wants.
It wasn't fair, but then none of it was. My ex-wife played single parent while I played absent father, roles neither of us wanted.
Thinking of absence, I realised that no one knew where I was and I had meetings organised for today. My team would be wondering what had happened to me. I pulled my mobile phone from my pocket, intending to call the office, but then stopped when I couldn't think what I would say to them.
If I called and said, "Hi, I've just had a heart attack, but I'm fine now" they would want me in a hospital for tests, assuming they believed me. Blackbird had told me my heart was fine, so why wasn't I at my desk, doing my job?
I looked at the signal on my mobile, showing a solid connection with the network. It wasn't my phone that was disconnected. It was me.
Blackbird returned, looking exactly as she had before, prompting me to look again to see whether there really were two of them. She sat down opposite, putting her bag at her feet and leaned her forearms on the table. "Who are you calling?" Her eyes were back to their natural grey.
"I was going to call work and let them know I'll be late."
"It would not be a wise thing to go into work, Rabbit. The Untainted are patient and they will wait their chance, but if someone gets in the way they will just kill them. You'll be putting the lives of your colleagues at risk."
"I still don't understand why they would want to kill me. I know you said it was because I had this… Fey blood, but why?"
"It's complicated."
"Try me."
"There are no simple explanations. I can't begin to explain it all."
"So I just have to take your word for it, do I?"
She sighed. "The Untainted are pure-bloods. They fought to keep the blood-lines of the Feyre free from the taint of humanity. Half-breeds like you and I are a symbol of their failure to maintain that purity. We are the reason they were exiled, the source of their pain, the justification for the continuing conflict between the courts. Simply by existing you are a thorn in their side, and they will pluck you out." "So will they come for you too?"
Her expression darkened. "They would if they could. I stay away from them, try not to get involved." She looked meaningfully at me. "Unfortunately, as I said, I gained some responsibility for what happens to you." "So maybe I could stay away from them too? Like you do."
"I told you, it gained a sense of you. It will be able to find you."
"So what am I supposed to do? It's not just me, there's my daughter too. She doesn't even know they'll be looking for her."
Blackbird paused, considering. It left me wondering how far her responsibilities went.
Finally, she spoke. "I can take you to see someone, someone who may know what to do. Maybe if you can join one of the six courts then it will help. The courts provide justice and protection. Any Fey who is not a member of the courts does not receive their protection. If you're killed then it is just unfortunate. No one will avenge your death or demand blood-price for your heart." "My heart?" "It is a figure of speech." I was relieved to hear it.
"Mostly," she added as an afterthought. "But the point is that the courts may be able to protect you from the Untainted and from other Fey who wish you harm, at least for a while." "And my daughter? What about her?"
"She's as safe as she can be at the moment, as long as you stay away from her."
"Will the courts protect her too?"
"They may, but meanwhile neither of you are bound to any court and therefore receive no one's protection." "Not even yours?"
She paused, then continued, "There is a way you may receive my protection. You could bind yourself to me as my servant for nine-times-nine years of your life, during which time you will do no one's will but mine. Is that what you want?" "Eighty-one years? I'll be dead by then."
"You may be dead a lot sooner than that. It is one way to survive. By binding yourself to me you would receive the court's protection as it extends to me and I would be responsible for your life. But when I say you would have no will but mine, I mean it. Any power you possess would be mine to command and if I told you to stick your head in a bucket of sewage and breathe in, you would do it." "And what about my daughter?"
"She would have to take her chances, as you did." "Then I can't. You understand?"
"It is a wise decision. Wiser than you know."
"I'm sorry? If you knew I shouldn't do it, why tempt me with the offer?"
"Life is full of choices. If you did not know it was a possibility then you could not choose. As you have chosen, your life may be short, but it will be your own. Had you decided to bind yourself to me then your life would be mine for the next eighty-one years. You will live longer than that, if you survive, but those years would have been mine, not yours. You would probably never see your daughter again." "Then I made the right choice."
"Perhaps. We make the choices we make. For as long as you live, your will and your power will be your own." "My power? You mean I'll be able to do magic too?" This whole conversation was starting to freak me out again.
"Don't get excited. Your gifts may be quite small: a talent for lighting fires, perhaps, or a way with growing things."
"Like green fingers?"
"Without knowing your heritage there's no way to predict what it w
ill be. You will find out in the next couple of days, if you live that long. It will take a little time to manifest properly. Your body adjusts quicker than your mind, especially as you have come into it so unexpectedly." "How will I know when it happens?"
She shook her head. "Each individual's experience is different, Rabbit. It could be that you will find that you can make things disappear in plain sight, or that you develop an intuition for how things should work and ways of fixing them. It could happen suddenly or develop slowly over weeks, months maybe."
"Is there a way of making it happen faster?"
"It isn't a matter of making it happen, Rabbit. It's already happened. The power is there within you, all you have to do is reach for it. Your mind, though, will not accept it. Like suddenly having an extra sense, your mind ignores it because it does not know what to do with it. Once you make that connection you will be able to bind your power to your intent, to make things happen because you want them to, bend reality around your will. But until you make the connection it will remain inactive. How long that takes depends on how much you believe in it, and how much you want it." I laughed. "What's so funny?"
"Me. I'm sitting here talking about magic powers as if they're real. I'm about as magical as this table." "There you are, you see? As long as your mind denies your power, your magic will remain quiescent, unsummoned. The truth is that long before your gift can flower, the Untainted will come for you. You need to be prepared."
"Maybe I can use my power to defend myself?"
"This is not the first time this has happened, Rabbit. You are not the only one to come into their power in the middle of their life. I helped another in your position. She wanted to fight." "What happened to her?"
She scanned across the crowd, as if in search of a familiar face. "I never saw her again. Maybe she is out there somewhere, never staying anywhere long, always moving." "You don't believe that."
She shifted her attention back to me, looking straight into my eyes. "No, I don't. If she fought then she died. If you fight, you will die also. These are full Fey and they are old. Magic responds to need, that's true, but the Untainted are among the most feared and powerful of the Feyre, creatures of nightmare. When they come for you, do not try and fight them. Run." "Where to?"
"It matters not. Wherever you go they will find you.
Just keep running and hope they do not catch you."
"And if they do?"
"Then it's over. You will die."
Three
"So what am I going to do? I can't keep running for ever."
"I'll take you to someone who may be able to offer you counsel. In the meantime you should call your office and tell them you won't be in. If you make it to Monday you can think again but that's a long way away, right now."
It was Thursday. How far away could the Monday be? Still, she had convinced me to make the call to work. I extracted my mobile from my jacket pocket and flipped it open to get the number from the speed-dials. It rang twice. "Good morning, Project Management Office. "
"Hi, Jackie. "
"Niall? Is that you? Where are you?"
"Hi, Jackie, sorry I've had some problems this morning and I'm not going to make it into the office. I need you to do a couple of things for me."
"But I've got the electrical engineers downstairs in reception waiting for you and there are a pile of phone messages from the site manager. He's been calling since seven-thirty."
I had made the mistake of calling her without any clear plan of what I would say.
"Jackie? Sorry, I know there are problems. Look, I've had a death in the family."
"Are you all right? Are Alex and Katherine OK?"
"They're fine. It's not them, thank God, but I'm the only one who can deal with it. Apparently there are circumstances and someone has to sort out the affairs." She reminded me of a host of commitments I had made and asked me what she was supposed to do with them.
"I'll have to deal with them next week, if I'm back. "
"If you're back? You have the fourth floor conference room booked for the heating and lighting review on Monday morning. What am I supposed to tell them? "
"Ask Jim if he'll talk to them." I named my deputy and second-in-command. "We only need an estimate at this stage. We can confirm prices later."
"So when will you be back? Jim is going to ask." She was right, he would.
"I don't know how long. A few days, I guess. I'll probably be back sometime next week. Could you tell Human Resources I'm taking unexpected leave? Anyone else, just call them and put them off for me. If there's anything that looks really urgent, ask Jim if he'll step in and cover."
"I'll ask him, Niall, but he is already complaining that he's over-committed."
"Thanks, Jackie." I was about to say I had another call waiting, but the lie stuck in my throat. It was a ruse I had used many times to cut short awkward calls, but I just couldn't say the words. I settled on an alternative. "You're a treasure. I don't know what I'd do without you." There was a stream of further questions that I couldn't hope to answer without a lot more time. "You're just going to have to cope, I'm really sorry. Ask Jim if you're not sure. OK. OK, bye. Bye." I closed the connection and sighed.
"That is something else I wanted to tell you," said Blackbird. "Lying isn't the same any more. The Feyre can tell when someone else is lying and they don't lie themselves. It's too…"
"Uncomfortable?"
"That's a good description. It's not that you couldn't lie, but it provokes a sense of discord that rankles in your heart. The more you use your magic, the stronger it will get. You're much better off telling the truth. Magic and truth are siblings, which is why true names have power."
"You might have mentioned it before I called the office," I suggested.
"There's so much I haven't told you, Rabbit, so much you need to know. I don't entirely know where to begin."
I was beginning to realise that, as much as I found that untruth rankled in my own heart, the words of others also held the same note. Blackbird wasn't lying. In fact it threw everything she'd told me into a new light. It briefly occurred to me that this might be yet another layer to this elaborate deception but I had felt it for myself. I knew it was so.
"You should make one more call before we go," she advised.
"Go? Go where?"
"We can't stay in one place for too long, Rabbit – or rather you can't."
"OK. Who should I call?"
"Your ex-wife. Tell her you can't come and collect your daughter this evening."
"Blackbird, I can't tell her that. We've already had one argument about it this morning."
"Do you value your daughter's life? You'd be putting them both in danger. Is that what you wish? "
"You know it's not, but what can I say to her? She already thinks I'm unreliable, unpredictable and a host of other words beginning with 'un'."
"Find a version of the truth she can accept," suggested Blackbird.
I opened my phone again then placed it on the table, looking at it. I really didn't want to make this call, though in my heart I knew I had no choice. I couldn't look after my daughter in these circumstances. I picked up the phone and stood up, excusing myself from Blackbird for a moment and walked a little way away across the open pavement to gain some privacy.
I took a deep breath and rang her. The phone buzzed for a while without answer. Finally she picked up.
"Yes?" Her voice was cold and curt.
"Kath, it's Niall."
"I know who it is. Your number comes up on the phone."
"I need to talk to you about tonight, about the weekend."
"We've had this discussion, Niall. You're coming to collect her after you finish work, whatever time. That's what we agreed."
"I know, and you know I hate to let you down."
She paused, then said, "I know you're going to."
"Kath, this is more complicated than you realise. Something happened this morning."
"Was it something more
important than your own daughter?"
"It concerns Alex as well."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if I come and get Alex, I'll be putting her in danger."
"What do you mean? What kind of danger? "
"There are some people after me."
"After you? What kind of people? Niall, have you been drinking?"
"I'm quite serious, Katherine, and no, I haven't been drinking. I'm very sober right now. Look, I know it sounds preposterous but you have to believe me. It isn't safe."
"What are you talking about? You just think you can make up some story and it will all go away, is that it? Good ol' Kath. She's always there when I want to go gallivanting off somewhere. She doesn't mind. She's used to being the housekeeper, the drudge, the domestic. Is that it?"
"No, it isn't like that. Something happened to me on the underground this morning. I nearly died. There was an ambulance. I had to be revived."
"Where are you now?"
